


footprints like oceans (and they're filled with your tears)

by firetan



Series: too much, too soon [1]
Category: Nurarihyon no Mago | Nura: Rise of the Yokai Clan
Genre: Coping, Gen, Mental Health Issues, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder - PTSD, kids coping with battles they shouldn't have had to fight, various ones
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-01-22
Updated: 2017-01-22
Packaged: 2018-09-19 04:42:45
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,801
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/9419258
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/firetan/pseuds/firetan
Summary: Everything's fine. Isn't it fine? They've all stepped into the shoes they were given, and are lifting up the sky like Atlas. Isn't that fine?





	

After the final battle, everybody puts themselves back together and returns to life as normal — or as normal as it ever has been, for yōkai and onmyōji and the humans who get caught up in their affairs. The Keikain clan rebuilds and focuses, pushing towards becoming stronger than ever before with the light of their young stars guiding the way. The Nura clan welcomes their Third head back home and immediately sets about re-establishing alliances and treaties, sending out thanks and offers to those who allied with them against that decisive force. The Kiyojūji Paranormal Patrol returns to researching yōkai, seeking out legends and locating myths and gathering a well of knowledge.

Everything's fine. _Isn't it fine?_ They've all stepped into the shoes they were given, and are lifting up the sky like Atlas. _Isn't that fine?_

* * *

Rikuo is not fine. He wakes up too many times in the night to actually have slept, and naps between classes. He disassociates for minutes or for hours, he rinses the taste of rot and bile from his mouth every morning, he learns to write with his left hand because sometimes he can't feel his right anymore. Sometimes, he flinches when he sees blond hair. Sometimes, he flinches when he sees Gyūki. Sometimes, he flinches when his grandfather walks into a room.

He asks to be excused from the pottery unit of Art class, because he can't look at the clay without seeing the Nue's shell and the memories painted on it. He keeps a dagger under his pillow and asks Akifusa to reforge Nenekirimaru _'just in case'_ , and he grows kerria in boxes on his windowsill until the plant creeps and climbs and latches onto the house itself.

He makes himself look strong in the meetings, and doesn't let himself flinch when one board member or another raises their voice and leans in threateningly. He remains quiet when he addresses his clan, and when his quiet cannot be heard he yells, because he _has_ to be heard, _he deserves to be heard after all this time doesn't he at least deserve to be heard_.

He doesn't let anyone but his friends take pictures of him. Wakana calls the school and requests that he be given an exemption from school picture day in eighth grade, ninth, tenth, until he graduates and they tell her they need something to put in the yearbook. He sends in a traditional ink painting of kerria blossoms that he labors over for days, his signature stamped in the corner in red ink, and tells them that's all they're going to get. The Kiyojūji Paranormal Patrol is given a page, and Kana makes sure to cover his face with something in each picture — flowers, a pile of books, Jirō's football.

They all do their best to help him. Kiyotsugu passes on information and resolutely hunts down those who still whisper about him in quiet classrooms and hidden corners. Jirō rambles at him when he's not quite there, so his teachers don't notice anything strange and get him into a bigger mess. Saori and Natsumi take him with them to Kyōto during the summer to see a therapist from Yura's family, who's promised to honor their privacy and informed of everything that happened. Yura herself stops by some evenings and they sit together in silence, drinking tea and watching the stars.

Miss Yokotani writes permission slips for him to use when he needs to be excused from class for clan matters, and lets him sit in her room during lunch so he can be somewhere quiet. Every year, on what she tells him is Ayako's birthday, she sends him a card and a small package of her deceased friend's favorite candies. The year he graduates, he asks her to present his diploma even though she's not his teacher anymore, and she does so with tears in her eyes.

There are some days when he can't make himself talk, can't force the words past his lips or even past his throat. Wakana goes shopping one afternoon and returns with three books on sign language, and together they learn so he won't be powerless even when he's nonverbal.

Every day, he's reminded of the fact that it will take him centuries to fill the footprints his father left behind.

* * *

Tsurara is not fine. She flinches and runs from spiders, and she can't stand anything higher than the roof of the main house unless she's securely held in place, because her dreams are haunted by the memory of hanging from Tsuchigumo's webs and waiting for Rikuo to arrive at his death. When she wakes from her nightmares, she asks Rikuo for Matoi, because when he wears her Fear she feels _safe_.

She reminds Rikuo to eat, and traces curls of frost along his right arm when it goes numb, and goes to ask someone to make him tea when he's shivering with the force of his memories. Whenever someone tries to snap a photo of him unannounced, she freezes the camera solid without remorse. She doesn't let anyone take pictures of her, either.

Occasionally, someone at school will sneer and jeer at her. She bites her lips and digs her nails into her hands and reminds herself that she shouldn't hurt them. Kana and Saori and Natsumi quickly step up to metaphorically and literally tear into the mockers, an honor guard she never thought she'd earned.

Her mother is back at the main house now, and she is reminded every day that Setsura is _strong_ , and _powerful_ , and _beautiful_ , and that Tsurara has a long way to go before she is any of those things. She doesn't know if she'll ever be enough to make her mother proud.

(Setsura doesn't have the words to say that she's already proud.)

* * *

Zen is not fine. He still finds himself waking with a start and coughing on smoke that's nothing more than a memory, and more often than not his dreams are painted with fire. When not fire, they're painted with blood and the thought of all the people he couldn't save, and _what if_ he hadn't been there for those he did. He sits alone at twilight and spreads his wings without caring that he can feel the poison slowly coursing through his veins, because he spread these wings for Rikuo and they symbolize his power to _save_ what his medicines cannot.

On the days when his health is really bad, he lets Rikuo fuss over him and push him back to bed, but he returns the favor just as often because he's seen his friend too close to death, too many times. They bicker and throw pillows at each other, and sometimes when he's choking on his own breath they Matoi and sit together in the cherry blossom tree that is Rikuo's inner mindscape. It's one of the only places he feels he can really breathe. He thinks Rikuo might feel the same.

He's been an adult for years now, but sometimes it still feels like everything's happened too fast. He took over the Zen Sect when he was barely of age, and some days he bitterly thinks that it will crumble with him when he dies far too soon, even for an ephemeral species such as his.

Quietly, he appreciates that Rikuo refuses to talk about him dying. It's nice to have someone care enough to not accept the inevitable.

* * *

Shōei is not fine. Even though he's the head of the Great Ape Alliance now, he still lives at the Nura main house, because he can't set foot in his childhood home without seeing blood on the walls and broken floors and his father's body in the middle of the room. He hunts down marauding yōkai in his territory with a vengeance, and wears his father's mask whenever he's not home ( _because his mother is dead and his father is dead and the main house is his home now_ ).

He refuses to use scissors, and receives cards from Rikuo's teacher on her friend's birthday. He doesn't know how she knows where to send them, but figures that someone from the clan probably told her and doesn't care, because it's a beautiful way to remember the dead.

It's hard for him to sit still during board meetings, because no matter how much time has passed all he can remember is hearing them passing over his father's death like the loss of an _asset_ , not the loss of someone valuable. He bites his tongue and grips his sword, and shouts the room to silence when Rikuo needs to be heard and can't make his voice loud enough.

He knows he's a leader now, but he still can't internalize being anything other than Hihi's half-human child, _his precious son_.

* * *

The Kiyojūji Paranormal Patrol aren't fine. Kiyotsugu and Jirō hold up well enough, and provide a guiding force for the group when it seems like they're going to fall apart. Sometimes, they flinch away from their memories, but they lean against each other in the afternoons while they make plans for the next meeting, and that's _pretty alright_. Jirō learns how to kick his football hard enough to hurt anything that might target them, and Kiyotsugu attacks rumors with a vengeance because he knows that words are weapons.

Kana becomes the pillar of stability within the group, because she never stops smiling and refuses to abandon her convictions even when they get afraid. She has nightmares about Ungaikyō and all the battles she's seen, and she has a hard time breathing when she sees rats, and she's stronger than anyone gives her credit for because she _pushes through_. Saori and Natsumi take her on their Kyōto therapy trip, which becomes an annual occurrence for the club after a few years, and she becomes good friends with the relatively average onmyōji that Yura has them talking to there. Soon enough, she has a collection of amulets and ofuda tucked into her pockets and purse, because she never wants to feel defenseless again.

Saori and Natsumi hold onto each other like lifelines. Natsumi has it worse — she can't go into her small closet, the school locker rooms, even the subway itself is off-limits to her now if she wants to stay in her own mind. She grows out her hair and braids it so that nobody can easily touch the back of her neck and send ice-cold fear prickling down her spine, and she always sits with her back to the wall. Yura's therapist cousin, Satsuko, gives her protective necklaces and self-defense lessons when they visit Kyōto, and Saori stands at her shoulder when they walk the school hallways. Saori's not afraid of anything that happened for herself, but she will never be able to close her eyes again without picturing her closest and most important person being sliced in half, in that alternate possibility where Rikuo wouldn't have been able to separate the yōkai from the victim. They text each other in the morning and evening, whenever one travels without the other, and throughout the day if one has to stay home from school, because they don't want to let anything happen like that ever again.

They're more mature than their classmates now, even as they try to keep their youth alive, and their teachers look on with concern as they smile politely and stand shoulder-to-shoulder. But at the very least, they have each other in this, when they know that so many others are alone.

* * *

Akifusa is not fine. He escapes by spending his time in the smithy, forging beautiful swords and knives that hum with energy and engraving their blades delicately with patterns and symbols and words and poetry. Alone with the naked blades and the heat of the fire and the weight of the hammer in his hands, he can forget the whispers that follow him — grey-colored, possessed, fallen from grace. They circle around his head and he does his best not to let them in, but sometimes it becomes to much and he escapes to the forge.

He wears high-necked shirts in public now, close-fitted turtlenecks under his traditional clothing and loose ones when he sleeps. Sometimes he wakes up screaming, hands clawing at his neck to rid himself of the memory of being _invaded_ and _violated_ , and his close family quickly learns to post someone in the room beside his to keep him from scratching himself bloody. When he bathes, he scrubs and scrubs and scrubs his skin raw as he tries to wash away the feeling of wrongness that still sometimes whispers just under the surface.

Water is a little difficult to drink, especially if Ryūji is also in the room, but he manages because his health must be maintained. He can't let himself be that weak again.

He doesn't hear the other young Keikain leaders when they tell him he never was weak.

* * *

Ryūji and Mamiru are not fine. Oh, they're better off than most after this war — because it may not have lasted _long_ , but it was a war to _them_ — but they both have their own internal struggles to push through. Mamiru often goes sleepless, because he is vulnerable when sleeping and the Raijū's power might go out of control when he's not awake to tamp it down. It's a permanent tingling in his limbs, an unpleasant reminder of how it feels to be electrocuted from within, and though he doesn't regret what he's become, he knows Ryūji _does_.

They both sometimes find themselves musing with habitual morbidity about what might have happened if they'd failed at protecting Yura. The one thing they'd both sworn to keep safe. Once, and only once, Mamiru leans against Ryūji's shoulder and asks in a quiet voice if they actually ever succeeded in the end. Ryūji turns very still and very pale, and his jaw clenches as he refuses to answer, and they don't talk about it again. They just go to sleep — they sleep in the same room now, side-by-side, because there's no-one besides each other that they trust to handle the nightmares and the sleepless nights and the screaming and the danger that they both pose — and put the conversation aside.

Secretly, Ryūji will never allow himself to forget that in order to make his sister stronger, he did his best to destroy her. He would wish that she didn't bear the scars of it, but he knows better than to wish for the impossible.

* * *

Yura is not fine. She doesn't remember her nightmares, but she wakes almost nightly with cries caught in her throat and hands grasping the air before her, to defend or to attack she doesn't know. She doesn't allow anyone to stay in her room with her, and takes to summoning a shikigami at night so she isn't defenseless while she's asleep ( _she refuses to be defenseless ever again_ ) even though it takes far too much energy and leaves her exhausted even after sleeping all night. Mostly, it's Tanrō, but sometimes when she can't sleep at all she summons Hagun and talks to Hidemoto, asks him for stories of the past and advice about leading a clan because _why did they ever think she could do this?_

Ryūji and Mamiru accompany her everywhere, and she would fight against it if she weren't relieved to have them with her. She knows they both worry that she's afraid of them, especially her brother, but to her they are a _lion_ and a _dragon_  and they are there to protect her, and she can't bring herself to feel anything but _safe_ in their presence. When they're there, she can go places that she can't set foot in otherwise, places that evoke images of death and pain.

They've buried her grandfather, but when she looks out at the courtyard of the main house she still sees broken wood and cleaved earth and his still body. She can't stand the sight of snails, and some nights she gives in and cries into her hands that she can't do it, _she can't be the leader they need_.

Akifusa tells her that the only thing she needs to be is herself, and the rest will come with time. She wishes she could believe him.

* * *

_They're not titans build to withstand the weight of the sky. They're children forced to grow up too fast and hold the world on their shoulders even though they may bend under the burden. They're twelve and thirteen and sixteen and nearly twenty and too young to have seen the things they've seen, their feet too small to fit in the footprints like oceans that have been left behind for them._

_But they have to keep going. There's no other path but forward for these children who aren't children any longer._

**Author's Note:**

> Part of a series I'm gonna write! Because let's face it, a lot of protagonists in a lot of media (especially manga holy shit) are too young to deal with the shit and trauma they endure. This one's Nura Mago, because jesus these guys are kids. Not only did they have to fight a battle that never should have been theirs, but now most of them have to step up and become leaders even though they're still young and still trying to recover.
> 
> Please read & comment!


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